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The story
A 26-year-old man who worked as a car salesman in Belgium has been legally recognized, through DNA testing, as the biological son of Prince Laurent (the King’s younger brother), and has now become an official member of the royal family. Reports say he was granted the same inheritance rights as the children born to the Prince and his wife, sparking chatter on 5ch — from “Why doesn’t Japan’s Imperial family do DNA testing?” to questions about whether a child born out of wedlock can actually hold a claim to the throne.
(CNN) — Clément Vandenkerckhove, a man who worked as a car salesman in Belgium, has become a prince at age 26. He has been recognized as the son of Prince Laurent, the King’s younger brother.
[Photo] Prince Laurent and Wendy Van Wanten back in the 1990s
Vandenkerckhove’s mother is a Belgian singer who was in a relationship with Prince Laurent in the 1990s. She reportedly revealed who his father was for the first time ten years ago, when he turned 16.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Getting adopted into a Japanese family still sounds more likely
That only applies to the former imperial branch families
Prince of Monkey Park?
What a coincidence
I'm the prince of the Pallas's Cat Kingdom myself
Having the surname "Van" means she was originally nobility, huh
Apparently in French, "Van" doesn't really carry weight as a noble title — even commoners use it
Kind of like how in Japan people just take their hometown's place name as a surname
While they're at it, use it for police investigations too — safe and secure
Re: #33
He married the Princess 23 years ago in 2003, and this guy is 26 — so he was born out of wedlock back when the Prince was still single
Thanks. You sure know a lot about this (lol)
I think that's fine, honestly
That's just how bloodlines work, isn't it
Unless it's some kind of fraud case, that is
Having trouble parsing long Japanese sentences?
Clément Vandenkerckhove got the DNA test because he's an illegitimate child
Prince Laurent's legitimate children haven't had any DNA testing done
Can you say the same thing about your own parents and grandparents?
Male-line descendants of the Minamoto, Taira, and Tachibana clans can trace their lineage back to the Imperial line
However, since they've already left the Imperial family and become commoners, they have no succession rights
Louise
Nicolas
Aymeric
The car salesman New‼
Probably more than an average commoner, but between diverting navy funds and showing up to a party at the Chinese embassy without government permission, he seems short on cash
His conduct was so worrying that his granduncle, two kings back, even came out in favor of female-line succession so his older sister could take the throne instead
She ended up marrying and having kids earlier than her brother, the current king, so succession wasn't even an issue for her
In Christian countries, children born out of wedlock have no succession rights
Background and Key Points
Prince Laurent sits fourth from the bottom of Belgium’s line of succession — a mostly ceremonial post since 1991, when Belgium moved to absolute primogeniture (eldest child regardless of sex inherits, hence the 1990s succession dispute the thread references involving his older sister Astrid). Belgian royals are also bound by the House Law: any marriage or, by implication, any birth affecting dynastic status normally requires the reigning monarch’s consent, which is why the King (Laurent’s father at the time) reportedly opposed the relationship with singer Wendy Van Wanten. Vandenkerckhove’s DNA test and recognition give him inheritance rights under ordinary Belgian civil law — matching what Laurent’s three marital children receive from his personal estate — but that is a private-law outcome, not a constitutional one.
The thread’s actual disagreement is narrower than “can he become king”: most posters who engage with the legal question agree an out-of-wedlock child has no succession rights in a Christian European monarchy, and one reply (194) corrects an earlier poster for conflating the DNA test (needed only because the son is illegitimate) with a broader “Japan doesn’t verify bloodlines” complaint. The split is really between posters using this as a jab at Japan’s Imperial Household Law — which bars illegitimate or female-line descendants entirely, no DNA testing needed since eligibility is settled by birth register — and posters pointing out the two systems aren’t comparable.
What goes unmentioned: Belgian succession law explicitly requires legitimate birth (filiation within marriage or formal legitimation) for a claim to the throne, so recognition of paternity alone, however total the inheritance rights, cannot create one — the throne question posed in the headline is effectively closed before the thread starts.
*This article is an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (Newsplus) thread “[Royal Family] Belgian car salesman becomes a prince at 26 — DNA test reveals royal bloodline, granted the same inheritance rights as the children born to the Prince and his wife.”
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